Lifting the Vale
by Lamanth
Summary: ONE SHOT – The world is a tangled web, built of the lies we tell ourselves to hide us from the pain of truth. Ming-Ming centric Kai/Ming-Ming Kai/Hilary


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Beyblade or any of its characters, merchandise, TV rights, ect… (I think you get the point.) Nor do I own the song 'Fairground Attraction' by Fairground Attraction.

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Summery 

ONE SHOT – The world is a tangled web, built of the lies we tell ourselves to hide us from the pain of truth. (Ming-Ming centric) (Kai/Ming-Ming) (Kai/Hilary)

Like all of my work this is just something that happened to float through the empty void inside my head. Like it or hate it please R and R as honest opinions are always welcomed, as are random acts of worship.

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Lamb: I feel in love with song the first time I heard it and knew I had to write a fic with it. Also, I have nothing against Hilary, as a character I love her to bits, but I hate the pairing of her and Kai. So please no bashing me for making her seem like that bad guy, same goes for Kai.

**Muse:** Have you finished now?

Lamb: Yes.

**Muse:** Good, because-

_Dedi:_ Because I have to do the dedication. This fic is dedicated to **shadowphoenix101** cus we think she might need cheering up. So** shadowphoenix101 **this is for you.

Lamb: As always sorry for any bad spelling and if you feel the need to throw things at me please wait until I've hidden behind the sofa kay!?

M**use: **On with the fic!

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_She said the man you love is secretly true,_

_To someone else who is very close to you,_

_My advice is that you leave this place,_

_Never come back,_

_And forget you ever saw my face,

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_

**Lifting the Vale**

A shiver ran through her body as she wondered listlessly, completely alone in the press of people. Music and laughter filled the warm air and the fairground sent a combination of earth, popcorn and sweat, hung heavily around her. Memories of the times she had gone with her parents to New Orleans to celebrated carnival floated around her head. The atmosphere head been one of intense exhilaration and though she had only been fourteen that last time she had gone she had been aware of the sexual tension that had felled the hot nights.

It was something dark and decadent, and a hint that beneath the surface something dangerous lurked. But never once had she felt as out of place and scared as she felt now, a grown woman of nineteen walking through a fair ground less then two miles from her own home. The crowed somehow seemed like a living entity that wished for nothing more than to trap her and hold her for it's own. Ming-Ming tried to banish such silly ideas from her mind, cursing her over active imagination as well as having gotton separated from her friends.

The vividly painted designs on rides took on strange connotations the longer she looked at them, the bright garish colours almost twisting and mutating before her eyes. Everywhere she turned people were calling out for anyone to come and try their hand at this or that, and stalls half hidden in shadows were watched over by people standing and beckoning or else by someone sitting in a chair set to one side. But there was no sign of the person for whom Ming-Ming desperately sort.

_Children with candyfloss,  
And prizes of goldfish,  
Young men kill tin ducks, _

_In sharp shooter poses,  
The laughter of the lovers,  
On the rickety stairs,  
The rumble of the diesels,  
and the sounds of the fair,_

She didn't know why she had done it really, she had never in her life believed in fortunate telling or that you could see what someone's destiny held just by looking at the palm of their hand. She thought it was all just guesswork, keeping things vague enough so that people could see whatever it was they wanted. But perhaps it was because she had been so desperate to ignore what she thought she knew. All she had wanted was the same lie that everyone seemed to get; you will fall in love and live happily ever after.

But she hadn't. Ming-Ming had followed the jet haired woman into the dark interior of a small red tent, it had seemed that everywhere she had gone that night that the small old woman was there watching her. Everywhere she went she seemed to find the elderly gypsy watching her with intent green eyes. So she had finally given in and allowed herself to be led into the stuffy tent. It was list by a half a dozen or so flickering candles, their glow filling the small space with a fiery glow but leaving the corners filled with a deep warm darkness.

_An old gypsy lady,  
In soft Spanish whispers,  
Took my hands in hers,  
And told me their secrets:  
Your heart is a fire,  
And his love is an ember;  
You must forget,  
What you'll always remember,  
_

Candlelight glimmered of the beads that adorned the shawl that was rapped tightly around the woman's wizened form. Deep lines and creases criss-crossed a dark skinned face that was also tanned by sun and wind, at a guess Ming-Ming would have put her age at around seventy-five at least yet her hair was still as dark as a ravens wing. The gypsies hands where small and fragile, looking as if the had been constructed from the delicate bones of a birds wing and then covered with tissue paper. But her skin had been soft as she lightly ran her fingertips over the palm on Ming-Ming's right hand, her bright green eyes partly closed.

For a long moment she had sat that way, staring into the middle distance her fingers dancing across Ming-Ming's right palm. Then with a soft regretful sigh, she had fixed those intense emerald orbs onto the face of the girl whose hand she held. In a low slightly rasping voice she had spoken of things that seemed to make the blood in the bluenettes veins freeze. Ming-Ming had shaken her head in denial of what she was being told, but still the gypsy had continued talking of things that she neither wanted to hear or believe. The flow of words had gone on and on and with each revelation things she had seen and heard fell into place in ways Ming-Ming did not want to contemplate.

Hissing angrily she had wrenched her hand free of that delicate grip and bolted into the night. In the close darkness of the tent the woman's words had been filled with dark portent, but when Ming-Ming once more stepped into the warm evening air the strange foreboding did not leave her.

_Superstition's nonsense,  
Just a fairground attraction,  
I walk through the neons,  
In search of distraction,  
But the tears in my eyes,  
Knew the truth in my heart,  
She'd only confirmed,  
What I knew at the start,_

Again she chided herself that she was worrying needlessly, she no more believed in fortune telling than she believed in pink dragons. But the tension in her stomach did not abate as she continued to wonder distractedly through the crowds, and the more she told herself not to waist her time thinking on what the old woman had said the more the thoughts plagued her mind. If she could just find him it would all be all right. She could stand in his firm embrace and laugh at how stupid she had been to swallow such nonsense. But the memory of the pain and sadness in those world-weary green eyes would not leave her.

A shiver ran though her as she continued on her way, her honey eyes searching the crowds for a sign of her friends or better yet for him. Feeling slightly claustrophobic as the mass of people washed round her Ming-Ming pushed her way through the crowed and slipped up the small path between two brightly light stalls. Pushing her hair from her eyes she took a deep breath and then began to walk down behind the fair ground rides taking care to step over the mass of electrical cables.

Relief swept over her as she spotted Hilary swiftly moving around the back of one of the booths and raised her hand to wave and call out a greeting when she saw who was following the brunette. The words died on her lips and a sharp pain shot through her left breast as she watched Kai pulled the ruby-eyed girl into a passionate embrace. Tears welled in her eyes as she swiftly turned for the scene and half blinded stumbled back the way she had come.

Without caring she pushed through the crowds that closed in around her, trying to block out the image of her friend and her lover that had engraved its self on her memory. The press of people gripped at her, holding her back as she tried desperately to escape. It wasn't until someone screamed her name and physically dragged her around did she realise that her friends had found her. Cries of dismay filled her ears and she was asked what had happened, but it was lost to her for she was looking at the old woman that stood in the entrance of a small red tent. Her green eyes filled with sorrow and regret.

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Lamb: Yeah I know boyfriend cheating with girl's best friend has been done so many times before, but it's what the fic dictated.

**Muse:** That and you don't fight things you don't have to.

_Dedi:_ Waist of energy. We hope you liked it **shadowphoenix101**.

Please R and R I'd love to know what you thought.

Big luv see ya

Lamanth


End file.
